About the Center

The Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College was founded in 1983 to commemorate the contributions of Nelson A. Rockefeller '30 to the life of the nation. The Rockefeller Center seeks to educate, train, and inspire the next generation of public policy leaders in all fields of endeavor through multidisciplinary education, public lectures by visiting scholars and dignitaries, skills training, and public policy-oriented research across the social sciences. The Center seeks to connect experiences in and out of the classroom, on and off campus to reach this goal. The Center offers many opportunities for discussion and interaction with scholars, policy makers and political figures. From pursuing a public policy minor, to participating in the Policy Research Shop, to engaging in lunch or dinner discussions with peers, faculty and distinguished visitors, you will find a space that bridges your academic and personal life at the Center.

The curricular offerings of the Rockefeller Center provide a wide variety of opportunities for students to engage with public policy in their area of interest. In addition to enrolling in one of the more than a dozen public policy courses offered each year, students have the ability to complete a public policy minor for in-depth exploration of the public policy process, policy research and analysis, and a targeted focus on a substantive policy area (e.g., health care, environment, education, social welfare). The Center sponsors the Policy Research Shop, a student-staffed, faculty-mentored research enterprise in which students conduct research at the request of New Hampshire and Vermont state, county, and local government officials, often with the opportunity to testify on their findings. The Center also offers an exchange program with Keble College at Oxford University, a fellowship through the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, and grants to students working on senior honors theses in the social sciences.

Scholarly work of the Dartmouth faculty is supported through interdisciplinary faculty workshops on health, law, foreign policy, gender and immigration, organizations and strategy, and the environment. The Center also hosts seminars where faculty and visiting scholars present their work. The Center provides multiple faculty funding opportunities for post-doctoral fellowships, research grants, conference grants, and classroom enhancement funding. The most important social science and public policy issues span several traditional academic disciplines and to support this multi-disciplinary approach, the Center has an array of programs to enhance the a faculty member's experience as a scholar and teacher at Dartmouth.